WRITERS BORN TODAY - W. R. BURNETT

It's the birthday of W. R. Burnett, born on this day in 1899. His crime novels set the standard for noir fiction and film in the 1930s and 40s. High Sierra, Little Caesar, and The Asphalt Jungle defined crime in Hollywood film and on the written page.

As a young man, Burnett got his start in politics, working on political campaigns for the Governor of Ohio. He soon discovered that the line between crime and public service was a thin one. "I knew from my earliest memory of how politics and crime were interwoven.", he said. He read everything he could get his hands on, good or bad. The novels he thought most important as a writer included Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara. Not bad for someone typecast as a crime writer.

With Burnett, plot played second fiddle to his character's fate. “I don’t have any plot in my books. Just life. And the relationship of characters and what happens to them”. In the end, most of his characters succumb to their own flaws.

Perhaps no work expressed this philosophy more than the novel The Asphalt Jungle. Made into a classic film, it portrays the heist of a jewelry store by a group of skilled professionals. Despite their initial success, the robbers are picked off one by one through a combination of their weakness, greed, and plain bad luck.

In 1980, he was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America, their highest honor.

You'll Have A Great Day With Eight Very Bad Nights!

 

The holidays are approaching, and if you have the urge to sneak away from the family festivities and curl up with a good book, I have a suggestion…Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir.

This collection of short stories centered around Hanukkah provides great entertainment and will appeal to everyone, regardless of your religion. After all, you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate a painful holiday spent with your boorish uncle or snoopy sister, wondering to yourself, "Aren't you dead yet?". There's something refreshing in seeing someone you despise get their just desserts (after a lavish dinner, of course). And after reading these stories, those homicidal urges should be satiated.

If they aren't, please resist the urge to use this collection as a HOW-TO guide to homicide (not that it doesn't contain a few good tips). Otherwise, you'll be spending the rest of your life in a prison cell, with plenty of time on your hands. Come to think of it, that's a lot of reading time, isn't it? But I digress.

Several great crime writers contributed to this collection edited by best-selling writer Tod Goldberg, many of whom I recognized, and a few who were new to me. You'll enjoy them all. There's even a story by Tod's brother, Lee Goldberg, a best-selling writer himself. Imagine having to edit your own brother's story submission...I wonder how that went over at the holiday dinner?